


Thoughts of a Shooting Star

by Laelior



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Just not yet, Kinda, Kinda Fluffy, Putting the science in science fiction, she gets better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-30 04:12:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10153412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laelior/pseuds/Laelior
Summary: Everyone always said space was cold.It was supposed to be the sterile void between heavenly bodies, devoid of warmth or heat. It was the stark loneliness of knowing you were all alone in an uncaring universe, in empty space. It was entropy, the slow death of heat and light in the universe as it all dissipated into an equilibrium of vast, disconnected spaces in the nothingness.As Shepard drifts toward an uncertain fate over Alchera, her thoughts turn toward her last happy memories.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been sitting on this idea for a while and finally decided to dip my toe into the Shenko pool. I hope to write more vignettes like this one when I have more time to work on them.
> 
> This Shepard intentionally left blank in terms of appearance/class/background.

Do not mourn me, friends  
I fall as a shooting star  
Into the next life

—John Scalzi, _The Old Man’s War_

 

Everyone always said space was cold.

It was supposed to be the sterile void between heavenly bodies, devoid of warmth or heat. It was the stark loneliness of knowing you were all alone in an uncaring universe, in empty space. It was entropy, the slow death of heat and light in the universe as it all dissipated into an equilibrium of vast, disconnected spaces in the nothingness.

It was floating, drifting in freefall, all by herself, watching the remains of her ship break apart in a series of silent explosions and watching the debris streaking across the horizon of her vision. It was hoping without much hope that her crew was in those little dots of blue light retreating from the wreckage. It was the blood red exclamation point that flashed across the bottom center of her HUD, accompanied by the text:

 **O** **2** **, 47%**  
**Power reserves: 32%**

It was supposed to be cold.

But in fact, it was suffocatingly hot. It was sweltering and stifling. Sweat pooled in the layers between her skin and the moisture-wicking suit under her armor, in the pits of her arms and under her breasts, at the back of her neck and behind her knees. Here, out in space, no gravity pulled it away from her body, and no open air circulated to evaporate it. The blinking yellow icon shaped like a little water drop in the corner of her HUD told her that the environmental controls, the systems that circulated coolant through the body of her suit, were malfunctioning. And there was nothing that could conduct the heat from her body. Not in space.

That was something all the old vids got wrong. The ones with explorers who answered the distress calls of seemingly abandoned ships that were exposed to the vacuum of space, and inevitably walked backward into the floating, frozen corpses of the former crew. But the Normandy didn’t have those giant heat sinks for nothing. The state-of-the-art stealth ship could hide its heat signature—had been able to, past tense—but dumping the heat was a problem in space where sparse amounts of matter made convective heat discharge all but impossible.

So she fell soundlessly through space, drowning in her own body heat, with only the sound of her own erratic breathing as accompaniment.

Little wisps of gas floated past her here and there, testament to the slow and steady leak of oxygen from her suit. She watched them go by, watching the last gasps of air she would never take escape her.

Physics was an unforgiving mistress. The rules and mechanics of momentum, ruthlessly drilled into her head in N7 zero-G training, demanded that each little puff of oxygen that escaped her suit changed her trajectory, proportional to its mass and velocity. Just a tiny bit. At first, she’d tried to use that, to steer away from the planet, from the relentless pull of its gravity, but it was little better than trying to nudge a mountain. She’d given up struggling, given up trying to stop the inevitable from happening.

At least her pressure was holding steady at .89 atm. For now. For as long as the power stayed on. Anoxia was not how she wanted to die, but decompression...that was unpleasant. To say the least.

 **O** **2** **, 36%**  
**Power reserves: 25%**

Her HUD had lost telemetry data from the Normandy’s computers. It couldn’t identify the white planet that loomed before her. What was the name Pressly had mentioned in his last status report before the attack that seemed to come out of nowhere? Al-something. Alchera? Yes, that sounded right. The icy, terrestrial planet with a heavy and toxic atmosphere. The hazy atmosphere swirled lazily, still so far away across the vastness of space.

There were worse days to die than as a shooting star. Would she streak across the sky, a blur of white in the star-filled field? Would her streak be orange as she burned through the methane-ammonia atmosphere?

If she didn’t get caught up in the planet’s gravity well, if she skidded and bounced off the atmosphere, she would keep going. Drifting, endlessly. Space was empty, but infinite. She would keep going until, eventually, one day, she would hit something.  Even objects caught in Lagrangian orbits eventually fell. Someday, somehow, she would be a shooting star, whether it was today or tomorrow or ten million tomorrows from now.

She watched those little blue dots speed away from the Normandy’s wreckage, counting them as they went.

_One._

_Two._

_Three._

_Four…._

And so on, giving names to each one, the names of the people she hoped were on them. They formed a dim constellation of the crew that had been with her to hell and back, that had loyally risked their lives and careers for her sake.

_Chakwas._

_Adams._

_Pressly._

_Joker._

_Kaidan._ _Oh, Kaidan…_.

 **O** **2** **, 31%**  
**Power reserves: 20%**  
**Going to power-saving mode.**

It didn’t seem that long ago that she’d been basking in the glow of victory and newfound love. And now...now she was here, drifting toward uncertain fate in space.

Her thoughts drifted outward, backward, to the last comforting memory she had, that night on the beach on Elysium.

* * *

 

“I’m back. I’ve got drinks.” Kaidan sauntered down the beach toward her, two frosty bottles in his hands. She did a double take, as she had frequently over the past few days. She still wasn’t used to the sight of him in civvies. Some people were born to wear a uniform, and Kaidan was one of them. Sometimes it seemed like the standard-issue Systems Alliance BDUs and T-shirt had been made just for him, to showcase his—in her _incredibly_ biased opinion—excellent physique.

Not that she was complaining about how he looked in jeans and a t-shirt. She found herself smiling, eyeing at the way his toned armed flexed and relaxed with each stride.

“You’re just in time. The forecast said it’s about to start.” She scooted over on the blanket laid out on the sand, making room for him. He handed her the bottles and turned to take off his boots to avoid tracking sand on the blanket, the neat-freak. Of course, she could get used to that view, as he bent over to untie the laces….

“Shepard,” he said in a low voice, not bothering to turn and look at her.

“Yes?”

“You’re ogling again, aren’t you?” He knew. Of course he knew. He always seemed to know when she was getting her fill of eye-candy.

She laughed. “Maybe a little. In my defense, you’re kinda right there.”

“Just...as long as you get out of the habit before shore leave ends.”

“My eyes will be all above board when we’re back on the Normandy,” she promised. And then added, with a hint of mischief. “The odd late-night visit to my quarters notwithstanding.”

“We’re in some pretty uncharted territory, Shepard. This whole thing—you and me—might not be against regs, but that’s just a technicality. I want it to work, but we’ll have to be careful now that the victory tour’s over.” His eyes crinkled with concern, and she sighed. He wasn’t wrong. Her status as a Spectre technically put her outside the Alliance’s chain of command and thus skirted the fraternization regs. But if someone in the Alliance wanted to make a fuss about it, that technicality was a thin sheet of ice between them and an ocean of shit. It was something they’d discussed more than once after Ilos, after the Citadel.

“I know, K. We’ll figure it out. We’ll make it work. But we’re not gonna get it all worked out tonight.” And he was worth that risk. She couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment when she’d made that decision, couldn’t point to a set of logical choices that led to that outcome, but every day in his company made it that much easier to rationalize.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he conceded. His shoulders relaxed a little. He finished kicking off his boots and settled in next to her on the blanket. They were facing the ocean, where the waves peaked and crested gently on the shore, carrying waves of blue bioluminescent algae on them. Some of it had washed ashore, leaving uneven, wavy patterns of glowing blue in the sand that traced back the receding tide. The beaches in this part of Elysium were famous for it. Tourists flocked from all over the galaxy to see it. Yet somehow this part of the beach was abandoned tonight. She suspected Anderson or someone with similar pull had arranged it.

On another night, the cool glow of the waves would have been beautiful enough to watch on its own. But tonight was different, it was special.

An orange glow suddenly bathed over the both of them from Kaidan’s omni-tool. “A once in a lifetime event, huh?”

“So said the tourist brochure. Put that thing away, please?”

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly, deactivating the omni-tool. “The ‘net site said it’s an magnetic ionization event and a periodic debris stream all at the same time. Pretty rare to have both at once, especially this far from the pole.”

“Most of us just call those ‘auroras’ and ‘shooting stars’,” she teased.

“‘Most people’ would be incorrect.”

“Falling meteorite doesn’t have the same ring to it,” she said, mostly just to annoy him with the wrong terminology. Here they were, just the two of them, on one of their last nights of shore leave while the Normandy was under repairs, and he was spending it on his omni-tool and geeking out over coronal mass ejections and atmospheric ionization. Not that she could blame him for the latter. It _was_ pretty awe inspiring, she thought, watching the ghostly curtains of green and purple light beginning to wash over the southern horizons. They danced across the glowing blue ocean waves

“Meteor. Meteorites are the ones that’ve already hit the ground.”

“Pedant. _Nerd_ .” She poked him playfully in the ribs, going for the spot she _knew_ was ticklish just under his sternum. He laughed and caught her wrist before she could dive in for another attack on that spot. He brought her hand up to his mouth and planted a warm kiss on her palm. He let go, then let his arm settle around her and pull her close. She rested her head against his shoulder, breathing in the clean, slightly ozone-y smell of him. They both just sat, watching the play of lights over the ocean.

She grabbed the bottles of beer and handed one to him. The bottle gave a little _pop_ and _hiss_ as she flipped the cap off of it. It smelled dark and more than a little hoppy. “You were gone for a while getting these. They worth the wait?”

“I had to walk a ways to find a decent beer. The closest place just had some cheap domestics.” His grimace spoke to a grievous offence against the taste buds.

“You make that sound like a crime.”

“A crime against good beer,” he laughed.

“Punishable by death in Canada, right?” She smiled mischievously at him, enjoying the way the corners of his eyes crinkled with his grin.

“Something like that.” He chuckled again and popped open the cap of his bottle, then took a long drink. “It’s acceptable,” he judged. She took a sip of hers then. She wasn’t the beer aficionado he was, but she couldn’t help but agree that this was better than the sort of cheap swill found at most of the tourist-trap concession stands near the beaches.

“K?” She asked after a while. The southern lights and the blue-tinged waves continued to play against each other, but the meteor shower hadn’t yet started.

“Hmm?” He shifted his attention from the heavens to her. The ghostly lights reflected against the dark brown of his eyes, and she was momentarily lost in the swell of sheer _something_ that welled up from somewhere within her. The question she’d been about to ask died an ignominious death at the tip of her tongue.

“What are the beaches near Vancouver like?” she asked when she managed to recover some presence of mind.

He looked over the sandy expanse that surrounded them on either side, then shrugged. “Less sandy, more rocky, especially the parts that weren’t beaches until the late 21st. They’re not spectacularly perfect like this—” he waved his beer at the beach, “but they’re beautiful in their own way. You’ll see, one of these days.” He said the last part uncertainly, almost as a question. She snuggled closer to him, a silent affirmative to his unasked question.

“When you get that beach house you’ve been talking about.” It still felt surreal to talk about the future, the capital-F Future, with him when so many uncertainties remained on the horizon. Their military careers would likely enforce long separations, and the inherently dangerous nature of Spectre work guaranteed no tomorrows.

And then there were the Reapers.

A shiver traveled down her spine. Sovereign had come close to annihilating the allied military forces of the Citadel races. That was one Reaper. How much damage could ten do? Twenty? A hundred?

“Hey, are you cold?” Kaidan was looking down at her, his brow knitted in concern. That brought her back to the present, to the man she was spending her shore leave with, to all the reasons she wanted to make it through the problems that lay ahead for the both of them.

She shook her head. “Just thinking. It’s nothing.” She stretched out, letting go of the worry over the impending Reaper threat, and buried her feet in the sand. The gritty feeling of the sand between her toes grounded her, kept her mind here and not chasing the worries of tomorrow across half of the galaxy.

Kaidan’s arm tightened around her.

“It’s starting,” she said. A single white streak cut across the sky, so fast she almost missed it. Then another, then two more. The streaks painted a lazy, random pattern across the heavens. At some point, Kaidan put his beer down and wrapped his other arm around her. She leaned into him, feeling safer in the comfort of his arms than she remembered feeling in a long time.

His smooth-shaved cheek nestled against hers. She felt his lips brush against her cheek as he whispered, oh so softly, “I love you.”

She wasn’t watching the sky anymore. She turned her face toward him and met his lips. The natural light show went on for most of the night, but that hardly seemed to matter anymore.

Maybe it hadn’t really happened that way. Maybe it hadn’t happened at all. But the memory of that warmth, the feeling of the sand between her toes, that was as real as it got out here.

* * *

 

 **O** **2** **, 12%**  
**Power reserves: 3%**  
**Power-saving mode.**

The corner of her HUD that wasn’t blinking increasingly alarming warnings still showed two slim bars, a weak data link to...something. Maybe a probe that hadn’t been destroyed in the explosion, or a life pod that was somehow still nearby. There was little chance she could use it to call for a rescue, but maybe, just maybe, she could say the words that she held so tightly in her throat that her whole being ached with them.

“Encode private message, priority two. To Staff Lieutenant Alenko, SSV Normandy, Systems Alliance. Begin recording.” She took a deep breath, always mindful of the oxygen display on her HUD. She needed to say it now, before those bars faded and she lost this opportunity. Saying it would make it real, make _this_ real. She was in a place somewhere beyond terror, but some part of her still recoiled from it. Was it really over, all in the flash of bright gold beam from an unknown enemy?

“Kaidan, I...I’m sorry,” she began, keeping her voice steadier than she felt. “I guess...this is good-bye. I won’t be going to that beach house near Vancouver with you.” She forged on ahead with the rest of her message before her emotions could catch up with the words that now spilled from her.

“I need you to do something for me: keep going.” Even as she said the words, everything in her being railed against it. She didn’t want him to move on. She didn’t want him to _have_ to. She wanted that vacation, that beach house. She wanted that future. But it wasn’t for her, or about her. Not now.

She closed her eyes for a moment and imagined. Kaidan, older than he was now. He had a stubble flecked with white hairs and some silver streaks at the temples in his otherwise jet black hair. Maybe he was a little more portly than he was now, but in the pleasant way of a soldier who no longer had to fight for a living. The corners of his eyes crinkled with laugh lines. He was happy, relaxed, at peace with himself.

She banished the image from her mind.

What she wanted mattered little to the cold demands of entropy.

“You need to keep going. Don’t let the Council forget about the Reapers. Keep on them. Do what you have to. Do it for me. Please.” She didn’t like the slight quaver in her voice. He didn’t need to hear that.

“And...take care of Joker. It’s not his fault. Tell him it’s not his fault.” If Joker survived. His had been the last pod ejected before the ship was torn in half beneath her feet. His pod might have been caught up in the wreckage. Or he could have been injured beyond the point of help. The last image of the helpless terror and anguish on his face as the pod door closed was burned on the inside of her eyelids.

_Please, let Joker survive._

“I love you, K. Go buy that beach house, go live your life. I’ll be there when you get to the other side, but I don’t want to see you for a long, long time. That’s an order, Lieutenant.” She took another breath, then said again, “I love you. Good-bye.”

“End recording. Send message.”

The stars began to fade from her vision. First, the dim, red ones, followed by the yellow and then the blue-white ones. One by one, they blended into the black tapestry of the horizon.

The only thing left in her field of vision was the last blinking icon.

 **_Error 407_ ** _: No carrier. Message not sent_.

Then that, too, faded as her armor blinked one last message in bright red font before the HUD flickered and died:

 **O** **2** **, 0%**

She turned toward the planet before her, the bright white ice that covered most of its surface. It loomed larger every moment, beckoning her closer. The feeling of floating would eventually start to give way to the stomach-clenching sensation of falling. But she would never feel it. She closed her eyes and turned her face toward Alchera.

_Good-bye, K. I’ll see you on the other side_

She replayed the memory of the shooting stars on the beach, the feeling of his arms around her, and the low rumble of his voice as he whispered _I love you_ in her ear.

Then the darkness embraced her, greeting her like an old friend as it guided her to the planet below.

It wasn’t cold at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [tumblr](http://laelior.tumblr.com/).


End file.
